Speed dial apps – voice dialers or photo dialers – seem like they are high on just about everybody’s iPhone apps wish list. I certainly always look to find one (or even one of each type) that works well for me.
So I was keen to give SpeechCloud Voice Dialer a try, as it the very first voice dialing application that made it to the iPhone App Store. I’ll keep this post short and not too sweet, because I’ve only given the program a quick look and find it pretty much unusable in its first version. Others may well have better luck, but you can read on for my findings and reasons for not continuing with it …
SpeechCloud Voice Dialer has a pleasant enough look and feel to it – very basic, but simple to use and one easy, large button to start issuing voice commands. It offers short, clear instructions on how to use it on the same main screen where the voice command button is.
In fact, that is the app’s only screen – there is not even a settings or preferences page of any kind. Another way in which the program keeps things simple is that it requires no training. You do not need to spend any time practicing or teaching it any commonly used words or similar. Right from the off, you just press and hold the large command button and say ‘Call contact name’ and away you go – in theory. 
So the app is pretty bare bones in terms of appearance and features – but that seems fine, as I really only want it to do one thing for me.
And that’s where the problem comes in. The one thing that SpeechCloud needs to do – recognize a contact name when spoken and call it – it has so far utterly failed to do more than 90% of the time!
I’ve tried the app out on four separate occasions today – all of them done in a quiet room with no music or TV playing anywhere in the house at the time. Each time I tried issuing commands to call 5-6 different contacts, with very different names each time, trying to cover names starting with all sorts of different letters, short names, longer ones, even a couple of client company names that are only letters (e.g. ‘Call KGI’).
I tried each contact 3 times. So in total I’ve given the app around 60-70 commands total across a range of (pretty easy) names thus far. Number of times it recognized the correct contact so a call could’ve been placed = 2.
Yup, two. Again, this was in a very quiet environment, and I tried placing the iPhone and its mic at varying distances away from my face, from very, very close to arm’s length etc. I tried speaking very slowly and less slowly, concentrated on speaking clearly, raised my voice to almost a shout. Nothing helped. Recognition was shockingly bad, useless.
Again, others’ mileage may vary of course – and I’d love to hear from any
of you who have tried the app, regardless of what sort of results you’re getting. But for me, SpeechCloud is a non-starter. If the results are this dismal in a quiet room when I’m pampering it in every way possible, what chance has it got in the ‘real world’ trying to make a call in a hurried voice in a noisy car, for example.
The apps’s web page mentions that it is in beta and recognition is still being worked on:
speechcloud’s Voice Dialer is in final beta, meaning the high-speed speech recognition servers it uses are still being tuned for accuracy on the iPhone. Also, the Voice Dialer works best on wifi and 3G networks. Performance over the AT&T Edge network (used by iPhone 1.0) varies widely.
All my tests were done over a strong WiFi connection – so I would suggest that (unless my results are a complete anomaly) there is a LONG way to to go in making the performance acceptable.
SpeechCloud is a free app (for now), though the web site indicates that this is only for the ‘beta period’. I certainly would not be very happy right now if I’d paid anything for this app, so I hope they will make great strides on improving performance in future updates. I’ll even keep the program installed, so that I can see whether they get this right.
For now though, I won’t be having any more strained conversations with it …
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Speed Dial was certainly high on my list of apps to find, just like everyone else
I just found a new one that came out this evening – “SpeedDial” seems to be simple (yay!) and works well.
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284994083&mt=8
I watched a demo of SpeechCloud where the phone was passed around in a noisy room to several speakers. Everyone got a correct hit on every try. One person could was a decent impersonator and used several of his “voices” including Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, etc. He also got a hit each time. Therefore, I can’t understand your difficulty. Perhaps your address book did not get uploaded correctly???
I had a PocketPC previous to my iPhone. Microsoft had an add-in voice dialer that worked beautifully. SpeechCloud has the potential.
I have tried SpeechCloud and I like it as far as it goes. I found the recognition to work fine, finding the right contact most all the time out of my 1000+ contact list. Here is the deal with voice dialing, it must be able to be used without looking and touching – that’s the whole point.
I want to be able to get the dialers’ attention by holding the call button on my bluetooth headset or by saying something, like “attention”. Then speaking the name, followed my “work” or “home” or something.
SpeechCloud is way too slow in my limited experience, and it is probably a problem that you have to select the application to use it.
I am looking forward to seeing how the development goes and I will take a look at SpeedDial, although the “jailbroken” Speedial required way to much set-up.
Full Disclosure: I am an employee of speechcloud (support staff).
PatrickJ,
I appreciate the review of our application, and apologize for the problems you experienced. It certainly flagged a serious problem with the application that has since been fixed. Obviously, the word “null” should not be part of a contact lookup. When this error occured, it threw the speech recognition part for a loop.
This problem did occur in about 25% of our user base (it was very dependent on the contacts we were looking up against). It has been fixed on our servers and all existing and new users should now benefit from the fix.
If you wouldn’t mind giving it another try and letting us know your results (support@speechcloud.com).
Also, I appreciate rustyhoge’s comments too. We are working on some of the very features that he/she mentioned.
Thanks again for your review and help,
– support@speechcloud.com
@speechcloudsupport – firstly, thanks for taking time to comment and share that info – much appreciated. Glad to hear that my results were not such an anomaly and that 25% were affected – don’t mean that in a bad way of course. I will certainly be giving it another try. Rest of today is very hectic, but will be on the case trying it soon …
I am using the original 8GB iPhone upgraded to ver 2.0 and I have a solid WiFi connection.
The first thing I attempted to d/l from the App Store was SpeechCloud. The d/l failed and when I attempted it a 2nd time I got a message saying the program was no longer available. I kept trying everyday and today I was able to d/l it again. When I selected it I got a message saying (sic)
“SpeechCloud is performing a one-time initialization which make take a few seconds”
Except for the obvious typo I was fine with that. I have 6,420 contacts so I understood why it took a little longer than a few seconds. The display went dim and then black and when I woke it up it was still initializing. OK. Finally it finished. I pressed and held the big button and said “Call…” but before I could say a name I got a “Contact not found” message. I tried several times but it is not possible to say anything before the message pops up. I decided to try again later.
Every time I select the SpeechCloud app it tells me it needs to perform a “one-time” initialization (the nice thing about Alzheimer’s is that you get to meet a lot of new people).
I also agree with Rustyhoge’s observations about how it should work. I am encouraged to see SpeechCloud responding to this post.
Full Disclaimer: I am speechcloud employee (support staff).
jboshear,
The problem you are having is unususal. It most likely has to do with the raw number of contacts you have (although that shouldn’t make a difference). And it definitely shouldn’t go through its one-time initialization more than once (after that, the phonetics of your contacts are updated in the background, without interrupting you). My guess is that you phone is going to sleep before the original set of phonetics is sent to our servers.
I would be happy to trace exactly what is going on if you would like. Simply contact support@speechcloud.com and we will fix the problem. I apologize for the inconvenience.
– support@speechcloud.com
My experience is a little different. When I first downloaded the app, the recognition was excellent, even in my Diesel truck. My only objections were 1. It was (and continues to be) painfully slow. 2. It requires looking at the screen to verify the correct contact.
Things have gone progressively downhill with each update. I just downloaded the latest update and scored a perfect 0 for 10 in recognition while sitting at my desk.
And don’t fall for the Mkayama Voice Dial. It is now $15, down from $25 and is even worse.
even if speechcloud is 100% accurate it takes far too long to return a result to make it at all useful. It took me at fastest 8 seconds on Wi-Fi.
Meanwhile there is another voice dialer called voicethis which is way better in my opinion as it only takes about 1 second to voice dial.
You must log in to post a comment.